


Kirk's Bootstraps

by Gyptian



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starring Uhura as Chief Communications Officer with a department, Kirk who loves boldness, poetry and his crew and Spock, who loves his people and is secretly a rebel. An exploration of... consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kirk's Bootstraps

“They'd _have_ no word to say adventure, just a general concept of uncertainty, which would be all about their children moving on to a different place and life... They themselves would be staying in one place, one community. To them, we flit about like birds, random and with no purpose they can see. It's a life utterly alien to them,” Uhura said, taking a bite out of her split-pea sandwich. Only politeness stopped her from talking with her mouth full.

“How would their sentience then be discovered?” Spock wanted to know, an empty bowl already sitting at his elbow. He usually ate and listened during the first half of dinner, and jumped into the conversation after he had finished. The plomeek soup had vanished very fast this evening.

Kirk grinned. “Ah, that's my favourite part, where the intrepid explorer gets kidnapped and held captive by suprisingly friendly aliens.” He waved a half-eaten burger in the air. “It was all a misunderstanding, in the end, am I right?”

“No,” said Uhura, who considered them equals off-duty. “She touches part of a tree and her mind connects to one more vast than hers. That's how she discovers the entire forest is sentient non-humanoids.” The sandwich was only half-done, though the mess had already emptied after the alpha shift's dinner rush.

“What are the odds?”

“It's a _thought experiment,_ it's not about what's likely, but about all the possibilities we're missing out on with our current policies. Such as when a species isn't ever likely to develop warp because they never travel in the first place.” She sat back and cast a smug look at Kirk.

“Would they not consider it a violation of their mind?” asked Spock, still seeming intent on pursuing the line of thought. Kirk smiled at him proudly. He'd gotten better at guessing, at entertaining fictional scenario's, once he decided that humans ran such mental simulations in the pursuit of logic.

“Not if it was the only way they _could_ talk,” Kirk said to Spock, who quirked an eyebrow at that. To Uhura, “Questioning policy is one thing, but the _Prime Directive?”_ he said with all the horror of one who'd broken it himself and had been made to understand by Starfleet how much they did not approve.

“Dr Santarona was fired, had to retract her paper and is now forever discredited in her field.” Uhura put down her sandwich and finger-pistoled Kirk. “ _You_ got lucky, you're still a Captain. She was humiliated.”

“But you want me to hire her anyway?” Kirk shoved his plate away from himself, hamburger sitting ill in his stomach at the thought of another good mind lost to challenging the status quo.

“ _Yes,_ ” she slapped the table, startling the three ensigns playing poker in a corner. Kirk kept his eyes on her. The Captain did not see, the Captain did not know, and so the Captain wouldn't have to reprimand them for having a little fun. “She's brilliant about imagining and explaining encounters with completely alien minds. Just... I'd love for the away teams to have the sort of training and flexibility of mind she'd give them. _Please,_ sir, the Communication's department First Contact specialist is retiring anyway.”

“She's an outcast,” he said in an undertone. “We'd be the laughingstock of the fleet. This is not the sort of move we need to be making right now.”

“We're a _ship_ full of outcasts. This is the only place she'd be able to do her job, sir, and have some effect,” she hissed back at him from between bared teeth. “We're already on the bottom rung of the popularity totem pole. _Who cares?”_

“ _My_ superior officer, who will -” Kirk started to say and then snapped his mouth shut, frowning, and said in a somewhat shaky voice, “Spock, weigh in here, I think I'm not completely... myself.”

His First officer glanced him up and down before starting in a slow monotone that indicated he was still thinking about what he was saying, “Starfleet has always had a versatile policy, but one that depended heavily on predictions of the future made by the Vulcan Science Academy. Since that ceased to exist, innovation in several large Federation institutions has stalled, Starfleet among them.

“Dr Santarona problematises the Prime Directive, saying that the current procedure for First Contact is humanoid-centric, and that we miss out on many potential encounters with more... alien species. While her examples, theoretical encounters with a Terran mythological creature, sentient trees, is unusual, she does make a valid point.” He leaned his fingertips together before his chin. “I support lieutenant Uhura in her proposal.”

“High praise of this scientist you've never met, Spock,” Kirk muttered with a half-smile.

Spock inclined his head. “I have read her work, Captain.”

Kirk cast his eyes up to the ceiling, but it did not offer to help lift the burden of the decision. It seemed he was to once again choose between boldness and obedience. He'd been burned for making the wrong choice already, once. What to do now?  _I think it's something Starfleet has lost,_ whispered a voice of the dead. All right, old man, all right, he thought. He looked back at Uhura and Spock. “Make the request, lieutenant, and I'll approve it.”

She rose, tray in hand and smile on her face, not even the top hook of her uniform undone as Kirk had. “Yes sir, thank you sir.” She made a half-turn, but then glanced back. “And Captain?”

“Yeah?” Kirk responded, tray already in his own hands.

“Welcome back.”

He stared after her. Sometimes that woman said the most incomprehensible things. He looked back at Spock. “You free this evening?”

The Vulcan inclined his head. “I am.”

“Chess?”

“Yes, Captain,” he said, rising as well.

“Jim,” he corrected while they walked to the disposal unit.

“Yes, Jim,” said Spock and later, when they were sat in front of a board and Kirk was puzzling over how to get out of check, “Jim... it seems you are changing your opinion on how closely you wish to adhere to Starfleet policy.”

Kirk groaned, and switched trains of thought for the moment, rubbing his hand over his face. “This is not going to result in a reprimand for 'creative interpretation of policy', Spock. This is going on the books, and problably into my files, as a full-on act of rebellion from a Captain in danger of going rogue.”

Spock's eyebrows cast shadows over his lids, now. “Do you waver in your decision?”

Brought up short, Kirk considered that, and while cold sweat trickled down his lower back he found to his relief that, “No, not at all.” And it was good to  _know_ again, with ineffable intuition, what to do. Such a relief in fact, that he veered up, slapped hands on his knees and smirked at Spock. “ _Hell,_ no.”

Spock nodded. “Nyota was right.”

“Huh?” That... was not what he had thought Spock was going to say.

“Welcome back, Captain,” And because Spock was Spock, and it was his mission in life to explain all the mysteries of the universe to Kirk, he mercifully added, “It is good to see your courage has returned to you, Jim.”

“...Oh.” He sat back, pleasure now rising to erase the dread. “Thank you, my friend.”

“It is the truth. Please make your move, Jim, you have had ten minutes to consider, a time limit _you_ instituted.” Spock proceeded to defeat him soundly, but it barely registered with Kirk through the haze of satisfaction, of sitting right in his own skin.

“It's good to walk the path less trodden,” he said to Spock at the end of the game, mostly to see if he would get the reference.

Spock hesitated for a moment in his answer, but then said, “In that case, Captain, I have a request to make, on behalf of my people.”

Kirk's eyes widened, and he quickly moved to sit catty-corner to Spock rather than opposite. “Tell me.” When Spock hesitated still, he urged, “Anything. Just tell me.”

“I... Starfleet has informed us that we ought to practice more independence in the rebuilding of our culture and that aid to New Vulcan would receive a lower priority now that our survival as a people on our new home planet was secured. But Jim... so much of what is required to sustain ourselves as a post-warp society still needs to happen. I wondered... there is a clause that a starship is allowed to respond directly to requests for aid from Core Member Planet of the Federation, and Vulcan was never struck from that list...” Spock stuttered to a halt, having obviously put an argument together out of wildly disparate elements but not daring to state that final, outrageous request that'd bind all of them together.

So Kirk did it for him, talking the talk was his job in this partnership of theirs, after all. “You want the Enterprise to help the Vulcan people, because they need it and Starfleet Command won't do it anymore...” A miniscule nod confirmed his request. “For how long?”

“Three-hundred and twenty-three days at a minimum.” He hesitated. “Five point four-five-two-eight years in the event that all probable delays should occur.”

Kirk motioned him to go on. “Probable being?"

“With a likelihood of more than twenty point seven percent. That's the Sambak Limit of -”

“Yeah, I heard of it.” Kirk grinned in the face of Spock's raised eyebrow. “Well, if you're going to explore the jungle of human thinking, the least I could do is brush up on the basics behind your logic.”

He sighed, pulled on the hem of his uniform shirt. “So you want to ask if Vulcan can appropriate the Enterprise for five years. Won't be able to do much exploring then.”

“Captain, our five-year mission was intended to send us into deep space, but we have not even left the centre of Federation territory in the last eighteen months.” He straightened his shoulders. “Starfleet's hypocrisy is evident.”

“Them's fighting words, Spock.” Kirk bent down behind his desk and picked up one of two PADDs from underneath it that wasn't in any way known or uplinked to Starfleet. They contained his... personal projects.

“Indeed, sir.” and when Kirk just stared at him after that confirmation, he tilted his head and approached. “Jim, I do not shirk violence when my crew and my Captain are attacked. I am willing to go far for the sake of my people.”

The cold sweat was back, on neck, shoulderblades, down his back and thighs, but Kirk could feel the itch in his hands and thrill under his skin that meant  _adrenaline,_ that promised a good fight. That sent his mind into warp, a thousand plans flashing by that would not slow until he'd sit down with Spock to figure out all the specifics. “Alright, Spock,” he said softly.

He held out his hand, but when Spock made to accept, darted out to clasp his underarm instead. After a moment, Spock returned the gesture. “I do not understand.”

Kirk grinned. “Look it up later.” He squeezed it and let go. “We've got plots to hatch and a coup to plan... Do Captains ever mutiny on their own ships, Mr. Spock?”

“I cannot say, sir, but I will look it up and present you with a report tomorrow.”

“You do that,” he said. “Look up some good ways to go against the established order without burning all bridges, Spock.”

“We should involve the lieutenant.”

“Oh?” Although... she _was_ an expert in diplomacy.

“As a female senior officer from the African States she has an innate understanding of navigating the vagaries of a hostile working environment without alienating her colleagues or conceding defeat.” He plucked the PADD from Kirk's fingers moments after the file Operation New 5YM had been made.

“You callin' Starfleet sexist and racist?” Kirk leaned over Spock's shoulders to see what he was typing.

“I have not witnessed overt prejudice, but the overrepresentation of white, male human officers in the higher ranks would suggest the existence of subconscious sexism, racism and anthrocentrism, yes.” He started typing in crew member names. “It is a legacy of the Eugenics wars. During my research into the period after our encounter with Kahn, I found much misinformation that... endures.”

“Yeah.” Kirk cleared his throat.

“Do not worry yourself Captain, you only suffer from a small measure of sexism. It does not influence your professional behaviour unduly. Lieutenant Uhura has corrected you the few times it has, and you accepted her feedback.”

“'Ware the honest man, his arrows are sharp and his aim is true,” muttered Kirk. “Alright, alright! Let's go help some Vulcans.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“I'll work on the... y'know.” Kirk's body was ready to  _do something_ but there wasn't anything to do yet. He started pacing.

“I would advise it, Captain. Vulcan is matriarchal. I do not believe my great-grandmother would appreciate it if you would address her with 'hello, beautiful' as you did the Wopta Queen.”

Kirk stared at him. “Are you making fun of me? I'm not hitting on anybody's great- _grandmother.”_

Spock paused his typing to glance up at him. “She has aged very elegantly. As you say, sir, _you never know.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> A little fact about politics that intrigues me is that the true decisions happen in more casual conversation that precede the paperwork and official negotiating. Original Star Trek showed the advantages and disadvantages of that and other politics beautifully. Especially the hopeful message that the big laws and decisions do not make you powerless, it makes you an agent who chooses to follow along or change course. And that it's better if you can do it together with friends, or a crew. 
> 
> Standalone, for now. May be continued.


End file.
